(19 Apr 2007)

I'm a massive fan of WWE and Mick Foley's books, and was sadly at work so wasn't able to make it, but my sister works in Oxford Street and sent me these pics! She even got a security guard to help her take the pics!! LOL

She said Mick Foley seemed like a really nice guy and waved at twice as she was taking the pics, but sadly they came out blurred!

Here are the pics! Please leave the link on the pics and add a link to this page/our site if use them on your website!

(2 Apr 2007)

This has since been relaunched as the Lite-On DD-A100X Mini Dual Format Multi-region Capable DVD Recorder with DivX (snappy title eh!)

It does effectively provide the same functionality as the 1105hc+

This dvd player is a real find at under £100 and you will struggle to find a DVD recorder with Divx capability which can match it at this price.

Firstly the unit itself is very small and neat, very portable and easy to set up with plenty of connections including AV, firewire and 2 scarts (although unfortunately no USB support)One factor which may have driven the price down on this unit is the lack of on unit display. The unit functions virtually entirely from the remote control with the user only able to turn off/on and eject the disc from the unit itself.This doesn’t present a problem however as the on screen menus are clear and easily accessible from a simple yet intuitive remote.

A common complaint about this DVD player/recorder is the time it takes to read discs when they are inserted. Generally an original disc can be playing in about 10seconds from the time its put into the machine, however discs containing various media formats such as Divx and jpegs and mp3’s can often take twice as long for the player to read and prepare the media format.

Recording is simple, either one touch or via a timer function, the unit allows up to 8 hours recording time on SLP or 1hour on HQ. The difference is noticeable but to be honest the difference between 2 or 3 hour length recording times and 1hr HQ recording times is negligible, it also features a handy ‘just fit’ option which auto adjusts the recording quality so it fits onto the remaining disc space.Finalising the discs is supposedly required to make them compatible with other players although depending on the player this is not always the case but is good practice to do anyway if you wish to keep the recording.On screen disc labelling is possible although quite fiddly with the remote control and the menu screen showing chapters or recordings can be quite slow to appear (especially if you have recorded an SLP disc)

Overall picture quality is good, although I wouldn’t say its anything amazing, certainly you would be looking at least an HDMI upscaling player if you intend watching films and recordings on an expensive HD ready flatscreen.

But for a multipurpose cheap player which plays virtually anything you throw at it and copes with troublesome skipping discs extremely well often playing them seamlessly when they jump on more expensive DVD players, this is a recommended player.

There is another option which is very similar to the Philips 5960 That is the LG DNX190UH

This has a pretty impressive list of features including the all important USB support allowing you to play back divx files, jpegs and music files such as mp3's direct from an external hard disk or usb stick.

At £76 its a bit more expensive that the Philips 5960 and has also been discontinued, however this means its likely to be available at a discounted price in the near future.

The videohelp.com forum has a comparison thread about the 2 players here:

(28 Mar 2007)

We've recently had big discussions about sorting out a multimedia setup....

As part of getting a xbox 360, I've got a HDTV and decided that I wanted to get a HDMI upscaling dvd player that plays divX. However, during our lengthy discussions - we started looking for this with USB support (so we can stick in either usb sticks or an external HD)

At first, we started looking at some of those cheap brands - and then as part of the random searching - found this Philips dvd player which seems to do the business and has some good reviews!

Our intention is not to review the products - (maybe if we end up buying it, then we might!) - it's just to get all the research that you'd do in one spot!

Daily Calendar

Daily Calendar

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog!! This blog is run by Amb and Don... we don't actually know what to do with this blog, but we figured it could be a nice dumping ground for our random conversations and some cool stuff that we find on Google Reader! Alternatively, it might just become our Jack Daniel's Shrine!!!